


Midnight Blue

by firewoodwander



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Action & Romance, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Friends to Friends With Benefits to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, clone sex culture, minimal plot, they're in love they're just bad at communication
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:28:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28844598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firewoodwander/pseuds/firewoodwander
Summary: Jesse lets the backs of his fingers brush gently over the curve of Kix’s temple. The fuzz of his meticulously-styled hair grazes his skin in a bizarre way that he wants to be able to feel throughout the rest of his life, however short that may be, exactly how he wants to hold him, just like this, and hide them both away from whatever horrors this war has to throw at them next.
Relationships: CT-5597 | Jesse/CT-6116 | Kix
Comments: 45
Kudos: 98
Collections: Clone Haven Ship of the Month





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [intimate moments - isaac dunbar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrMLoEOmlsE)   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been sitting in my wips for months and I just haven't done anything with it for ages, so here it is! My comfort husbands being emotionally repressed darlings. I love them.

Jesse stares through the near-complete darkness at the sweet slackness of Kix’s expression. It’s not peaceful, exactly, and he’s not asleep yet—has too many things and people to worry about to ever truly seem to be at peace—but he’s calm, and quiet, and Jesse wants to hold this moment in time forever.

Kix twitches, eyebrows furrowing as he scrunches his nose. Jesse probably shouldn’t be staring like this, but it melts him into something soft and gooey and so unfitting for a soldier of the Republic when he does. Kix is wonderful, Kix is brilliant, and Jesse thinks that maybe he could be excused. 

Kix does his job better than he was decanted for it, and everyone who isn’t only ever terrified of him loves him dearly. Jesse is brash, stubborn, and shirks responsibility like it’s a plague. Logically they shouldn’t even be friends, let alone at the same level of ‘best’ Jesse’s formed with Rex over years of toil and commiseration and unwavering loyalty. Logically, Kix should be trying to space him at every opportunity he gets; while he’s sure there’s a scalpel somewhere with his name on it, Jesse’s yet to do anything that’s driven Kix to actually carry through with his threats.

In the quiet of the bunkroom, Kix sighs and rolls to put his back to Jesse. Jesse freezes, momentarily, but relaxes when Kix doesn’t otherwise open his eyes to catch him.

So no, Kix isn’t interested. Not that Jesse wouldn’t give his entire soul for him in a heartbeat regardless. Jesse traces the solid line of his back and shoulders with his eyes, yearning to follow with his fingers, his lips, and maybe even his teeth.

It’s at this thought, of course, that Kix makes a tired, unsatisfied noise and shuffles back to press into Jesse’s chest and line their bodies together. He stills, and Jesse makes the tiny, low, panicked noise of the mortally embarrassed.

Kix’s head raises from his pillow.

“Are you hard?” he murmurs, somewhat disbelievingly. Jesse makes the same noise again, lower, wary of waking the brothers sleeping around them. A beat passes before he sees Kix’s expression change in the cut of his cheekbones against the darkness, but he can’t tell what to. Slowly, torturously, he pushes back into the cradle of Jesse’s hips.

Jesse swallows yet another noise as his hand flies to Kix’s waist, torn between jerking his entire body away and rocking hard up into the wall of warm, solid muscle half-burrowed into him.

“Aw,” Kix teases quietly. “Is that for me?”

_ Fuck. _

“Kix...” Jesse hisses, mortified at his inability to keep his feelings in check.

“No? Are you disappointed I’m not Fives, or Hardcase?”

Jesse blinks and shakes his head, watching Kix turn to maneouver himself into Jesse’s arms, this time chest to chest. “What?”

“Still no?” he grins. “Echo, then? Denal?”

_ “Kix!” _ Jesse replies, because—because—

But Kix seems unconcerned as he begins stripping off his upper blacks in a way that enables maximum contact at all times. “That’s probably good, they’re all spoken for already.” The uppers go, and then he’s hooking fingers under the waist of his lowers and Jesse is moments away from combusting on the spot. 

“Oh,” Kix says then, smile turning sly,  _ “The Captain.” _

Jesse nearly hits him. “You said you wouldn’t bring that up again!”

Kix only smooths a hand down Jesse’s chest and mutters, “Shush, shush, I’m just winding you up,” and gets rid of the last of his clothes from around his ankles.

Jesse doesn’t know what to do.

Apparently determined not to let him sit there like the non-sentient citrus he is, Kix frowns and picks at the hem of Jesse’s own blacks before tapping his arm. “C’mon, I should still be good to go. Let Coric do me in the back room just after shift.”

Wrong-footed and struggling to peel himself out of his undersuit without falling off the bunk, Jesse can’t help but groan at the image that immediately paints itself across his mind. “Force, that’s kriffing  _ hot.” _

“Yeah?” Kix teases, the grin back in his voice though Jesse can’t look at him, not when he’s got his leg cocked and his fingers already knuckle deep in his—oh,  _ gods. _ “You like that? You like thinking about another vod shagging me senseless in the medbay?”

“Kix,” Jesse mutters, and his shorts finally drop off the ends of his toes, “shut up.”

Kix snorts. “Not when I know you like it. But hurry up, and be quiet before we wake someone.”

“Are you sure?” Jesse blurts suddenly. “You want this?”  _ You want me, _ he doesn’t ask.

Kix pauses, looking up from somewhere over Jesse’s shoulder to meet his eyes. He smiles. It’s just as beautiful in the dark as in the day. “Yeah. Do you?”

Jesse tries not to laugh, the feeling of his hard-on hot against his thigh and pressing in his mind, and feels giddy with the overflowing excitement of getting to fuck  _ Kix. _ “Yeah, yeah, course.”

“Then get to it,” he says, rolling his eyes with good-natured exasperation. He grabs Jesse’s hand and slicks it with—really, when the hell did he find the lube?—until he can press Jesse’s fingers to the soft, soft puckered skin around his already wet entrance. Jesse’s heart skips up into his throat as he pushes one in, nudging around the inside just slowly enough to make Kix sigh and tilt his hips up. 

The warmth of Kix under Jesse’s hands and pressed to his front is encompassing and addictive and  _ gorgeous, _ and he doesn’t know that if he does this he’ll ever be able to let it go again. He moves the finger slowly, surely, and uses his other hand to cautiously explore the rest of Kix’s skin.

“Kriff, come on,” Kix whispers, “I can take more than that.”

Jesse pushes in the tip of his second finger before shoving them both in harder, all the way up to the knuckle. Kix jerks and muffles a yelp. His expression slides into one of satisfaction, and he sinks into the sensation with a heated look from beneath his lashes.

_ “There _ we go.”

Sitting up and rolling to lie between Kix’s spread thighs, Jesse eyes his standing cock while he thrusts and curls his fingers in and out. Kix pulls both knees up to make space and it sways promisingly between his thighs, so, really, Jesse’s only option is to lean forward and take the head into his mouth and suck.

Kix’s breath hitches on a high noise and Jesse closes his eyes, letting his free hand wander up his friend’s side to find a nipple and tug playfully. He swirls his tongue as best he can beneath the head of Kix’s cock, sinking down another inch or so and sucking on the upstroke, licking up the underside from base to tip with a sigh. Kix’s hole is twitching and tightening around his fingers, practically begging, so he pushes in a lubed third and stretches him on them until he moans. 

“Jesse,” Kix breathes. A hand finds its way to Jesse’s scalp and strokes across it. “Jesse, it’s good, come on.”

Jesse pulls off his cock and refocuses on his fingers, stretching until he can prod his littlest in alongside the first three and Kix is practically kicking him in the side to get on with it.

“You okay like this?” he asks, sitting up.

“Yes, yes, Jesse, I don’t care—”

_ “Kix. _ Kixie. Patience.”

“Patience my arse,” Kix mutters, but he reaches back to retrieve the pillow and stuff it under his hips, whining when he writhes on Jesse’s fingers. “I’m  _ patient _ when you and the others won’t take care of yourselves or come to annoy me at work. Don’t make me wait for your cock, too.”

Jesse swallows as he gazes down at Kix spread out beneath him in the darkness. Flushed and grinning and damp with sweat: beautiful, wonderful Kix. 

Kix, skirting the line of  _ begging _ for his cock. His.  _ Jesse’s. _

“You this eager for every vod who offers you a lay?” he huffs, taking Kix’s legs and tipping them up to seat himself on his knees in the space between. Kix scowls in protest of the loss of his fingers.

“Only the good ones,” he mutters, and  _ fuck, _ if that doesn’t have Jesse’s eyebrows flying towards his non-existent hairline.

“What, you heard stories?” he grins. “Someone telling tales in the mess hall?”

But Kix’s gaze has lowered from his to fix on their groins. “Just shut up and get inside me, chakaar.”

He smacks the lube into his hand; Jesse slicks himself and lines up as quickly as if he’s taking orders. The head of his cock nudges Kix’s entrance and he glances up just in time to catch the way Kix pulls his lower lip between his teeth before he pushes inside, exhaling long and slow as that soft, slick, fluttering heat clenches down on his cock and begs him in. Jesse can’t help but roll each thrust harder as he builds a slow rhythm, shivering with the excitement coiled in his gut and groaning when Kix arches up and wriggles to meet him. The slide is perfect, uninhibited, and in that moment Jesse doesn’t even care that he’s just a casual thing.

Kix breathes out a sigh and drops his head back to the mattress. “Why didn’t we do this before,” he murmurs. Jesse isn’t sure he really wants an answer.

“You good?” he whispers. Kix looks at him flatly and rocks on his cock, and Jesse doesn’t need more encouragement than that. With one long drag out and a sharp thrust back in he sets his pace, not quite slow, but languid and hard, and just enough to punch small noises from the back of Kix’s throat. 

He looks stunning like this, spread wide while Jesse fucks into his sweet, tight ass. Jesse pulls his cheeks apart just to see where he disappears inside beneath Kix’s balls and nearly shoots off then and there—fuck if that isn’t seared into his brain forever after. 

Kix’s legs are pale in the hazy leak of white striplighting from the door gap as it hits him, slanted across Jesse’s bunk in the dark. Jesse grunts and changes the angle of his hips. His next thrust sinks deep, deeper than before and right up to take his whole cock. The slap of their skin is all the louder in the ringing quiet of the bunkroom for it. They don’t think much of it—everyone’s been woken up by brothers fucking at stupid times in the night cycle before, it’s not new—and Kix reaches up, fingers clawing at Jesse’s arms for purchase. He wraps his legs higher up Jesse’s back when he leans forward to accommodate him, yanking them closer for all that he impedes their movement. He clenches around Jesse’s cock and Jesse hisses, snapping forward and drinking in the inaudible nonsense Kix moans into his ear. Kix turns his head and kisses them both breathless, more a tangle of tongue and air and lips caught and pulled between teeth, seemingly intent on hiding whatever he’s saying in the heat of Jesse’s mouth. 

“Come on,” Jesse murmurs, finally pulling away from that intoxicating embrace. He sits back and tugs at Kix’s cephalopodic cling until his feet drop back to the bed before slipping quickly out.

“What—?” Kix begins to complain, but Jesse hauls him closer and pushes at his side. He gets the idea quickly enough to get his knees under himself, pillow retrieved so he can push his face into it while Jesse marvels at the vision in front of him. 

Kix, arse-up, his spine a beautiful arc, legs spread wide in invitation. Jesse thumbs over his entrance and he whines again, muffled, shoving back until Jesse obeys. 

His cock slips past Kix’s glistening entrance with ease and he’s already pulling back by the time he sinks home, digging his fingers into Kix’s hips to aid him with every thrust he practically throws himself back on. It’s so hot, so fucking  _ good _ to see Kix flex beneath his hands, to hear him moan into the pillow on every slap of Jesse’s balls against his thighs. Jesse feels himself flying off towards the edge of that precipice again and has to take a deep, shuddering breath, calling up every line he can remember from Hardcase’s Z-6 manuals and running through them while he searches out the spot inside Kix that’ll make him shout.

“Oh!” Kix gasps, fucked off the edge of his pillow and voice cracking loudly in the hush. Jesse shivers and drapes himself down the curve of Kix’s back to bite reverently along his shoulders.

“Don’t hide,” he whispers against all his better judgement. “I want them to hear you.”

Kix traps a strangled noise in his chest and turns his head to look at him, wide-eyed and red in the face.  _ “I _ don’t!” he hisses. “Jesse— _ oh! _ —it’s not funny!”

“It kind of is,” Jesse argues, but he sits back up and fucks him all the harder, reaching around to grasp his leaking cock. 

_“Nh,_ _Jesse!”_

Jesse chokes and feels himself tip over the edge, transfixed by the view Kix’s open-mouthed bliss presents. He pulls out just in time to come thick and heavy over the backs of Kix’s thigh, winded and speechless and hanging onto Kix’s hip for dear life. Kix jolts with the sensation and his hips buck down, into Jesse’s hand, which just about works on autopilot to twist off at the head and pull him, shivering, over the edge right after.

There’s a moment filled with nothing but their laboured breathing and then Kix groans, long and low, practically melting into his own shoulders as he lets his body sag. Jesse catches him before he falls forward and smears a sticky patch across Jesse’s sheets.

“Mesh’la,” he can’t help but murmur, his fingers wandering featherlight over the gooseflesh rising on Kix’s thighs.

“Get that one a lot,” Kix laughs weakly. He’s still talking muffled into the pillow, and his cheek and ears are red where Jesse doesn’t have the privilege of seeing his face. 

Annoyed by the spark of jealousy the thought provokes, Jesse settles on his front between Kix’s still-spread legs and cranes forward to begin licking up the dripping mess he’s made there. Kix jerks and shouts a noise of surprise into the pillow—Jesse feels him strain to push up on shivering arms and looks up long enough to meet his gaze below his come-streaked body.

“Oh fuck,” Kix breathes.  _ “Hells _ no, I can’t get it up again that quickly.”

Jesse snorts into the underside of his arse and cleans up the last of it quickly so that he can roll Kix off trembling limbs and onto his back. The little puff of a groan it lands him probably shouldn’t register under such adoration, for two hardened clone troopers, but Jesse has long made peace with the fact that he’s an absolute goner, so he leans in again and makes his way up Kix’s incredible abs, licking off the mess of come instead of dwelling on it any longer.

“Okay, okay,” Kix says eventually, pushing at Jesse’s forehead until he backs off. “It’s good. I’m good.”

“If you say so,” Jesse hums. He rolls to the side and shuffles back up the bed, watching as Kix staggers naked into the dark space between their bed and Hardcase’s, who, miraculously, appears to still be asleep. The outline of Kix’s body reappears in the doorway that suddenly illuminates, blindingly bright for all the ship’s lights are set to night cycle, and the sight of him sends something sharp and not quite painful straight through the centre of his chest. The door closes behind him and takes the light with it.

For a while, sitting in the dark and the silence, Jesse wonders if Kix is planning on coming back at all. Their blacks are a tangled condemnation of fabric on the floor and suddenly he’s anxious all over again—what has he done? What for? What if he’s ruined everything they’d worked up to? What if Kix never speaks to him again? What if he’s—he’s made it  _ obvious, _ if Kix knows, and is desperately thinking of a way to let him down gently while he hides out in the fresher. 

But then the barracks door is hissing open again and Kix reappears, slipping into the bed and right up against Jesse as if nothing’s changed at all.

“That was fun,” he says, yawning a little. He tucks his head into Jesse’s shoulder and sighs, and Jesse thinks of him wandering about the ship halls naked and with both of their spend drying on his skin and almost whines like a wounded massiff. “You really ought to use the fresher.”

“Way to kill the mood,” Jesse mutters. He can feel the lube still sticky on his cock and thighs, but with Kix still inexplicably here and snuggled into his arms, he’s really not in a hurry to move.

“I won’t be treating you for a UTI,” is the last thing Kix says sleepily into his skin, and Jesse keeps his chuckle low in his chest and closes his eyes, shoving his choking fears right back into their box and sitting on its lid in his best attempt to let himself drift off to sleep. He manages, some time later, to the rise and fall of Kix’s smooth-soft chest under his hands, still pressed together like the lovers Jesse can only long to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know where this story is going, vaguely, but I am very open to suggestions and requests for anything you'd like to happen between these two :3c


	2. Chapter 2

The first months of the war were hard. Inarguably so for soldiers fresh off the only planet they’d known and into a new war no one yet knew the full parameters of. And yet, despite the experience they gained, the learning curves and breakthroughs and leaps and bounds in technology, it had only ever seemed to get harder.

They’d taken a Jedi General, then a Commander who seemed to grow tall with her montrals and long with her lekku as the lines in their Captain’s face grew ever deeper. She would joke with Jesse and the other Lts. that her growth was stored in her headpiece. She would run and jump and spar with the ARCs, find herself accidentally thrown across the room by Echo, who was so much more accustomed to the weight of a brother over his shoulders instead. She would hop up onto ridiculously exposed perches in the middle of live fire to bat away incoming plasma bolts as one or other of them screamed for her to get down. 

And her Master would lead by example, always diving into the fray in a spinning blur of blue and deep red. They were beacons of hope and a sign of rescue.

But as time went on, the ones for whom it seemed to be worst of all were those left with the dead and dying. 

Jesse doesn’t even nod to Lt Kide as he passes him in the corridor. He’s barking orders to his men down the comm lines, directing this way and that as he readies his own blaster and slides into position to the tune of wailing alarms.

Hull breach on the upper levels, starboard side. Shield integrity dropping. A whole platoon of fighters down and only one Seppie cruiser with them. Hull breach on Level Four-Three-One. Hull breach on Level Six-Twelve. Hull breach on Level—

There are clankers marching through the halls. Everyone’s shouting again, redirecting, reassigning, sending squads to all number of stations. Jesse’s running again. The port side has been hit the worst, more waves tearing through men than they can tackle. It looks to him like they’re advancing towards the engine rooms, but that also means…

“What are you _doing?”_ he shouts. It takes him half a second to realise who it is he’s shouting at. “Are you an idiot? Get back inside!”

Kix turns and scowls at him. No bucket, no armour: just his blacks, a DC-15, and utility belt which may or may not be filled with spare power packs and sharp instruments. Behind him, the final set of blast doors seal over the mediwing. 

“Emergency shutdown is triggered faster from the outside, _di’kut,”_ he snaps. “And it’ll take far too long to reset it all now—”

“What the—?”

“Maintenance error, we’ve known about it for ages. Now why the fuck are we standing around?”

“You’re not even wearing anything!”

Kix shoulders his blaster and gives him a look. “Even if I wasn’t, do you think that would stop me?”

Jesse opens his mouth, but the sudden approaching march of something, a lot of somethings, metallic and heavy, has him reaching out to grab Kix’s arm and set them off running again.

“Do you have a plan?” Kix shouts over wailing alarms. 

“No!” Jesse shouts back. “Do you?”

“Why would I be the one with the plan?”

“You’re the smart one!”

“I’m the medic!”

“There’s a difference?”

“Get karked!”

The corridor branches, one path veering towards the outer hull, the other leading deeper into the ship’s guts. Jesse skids to a stop by the access panel at the intersection. Most platoons have been ordered to the other end of the section where the greatest concentration of clankers is slowly being beaten down; Jesse and Kix might well be the only troopers this deep on the level.

“One giant game of snake,” he mutters to himself, triggering all of the blast doors between this passage and the reactor room. He steps away and nearly jumps out of his skin when blaster fire sounds right behind his ear. He whips around, blaster rising, but—

“What?” Kix asks. The panel Jesse just used is a smoking mess of plastic and electronics.

Jesse opens his mouth. Closes it. Shrugs.

But they still have clankers on their tail, so they keep moving. Jesse pauses at each intersection to check the clearance and lock down the doors. Kix follows in his wake and blasts each access port to hell. Utilities is going to karking despise them, but at least they’ll still be alive to do it.

Or at least, that’s the hope.

An airlock comes into view up ahead. Jesse spares half a thought for the surprise of realising the droids haven’t just stopped following them, or tried to get through any of the doors yet by force. He skids to a halt and wrenches away the panel on the wall next to the lock—on the maintenance screen behind it, just like the rest of them, the compromised areas called up by the alarms are flashing red, advancing blips in the corridors just behind them. Jesse stares at the panel. Glances at Kix, standing anxious and vigilant. Back to the panel.

Non-standard external sublight operating procedure mandates minimum two points of contact between walker and vessel at all times. Jesse has two lines, both of which he scrambles to attach to the hooks on his utility belt before turning to Kix and grabbing him by the shoulders.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, looking him dead in the eye through his visor.

“What?” Kix demands. He watches Jesse with some mixture of horror and incomprehension; Jesse watches the blips on the monitor out of the corner of his eye march ever closer to the junction.

“Do you _trust me?”_ he repeats, louder and more harried. Kix is distracted, and Jesse slips the end of one line onto the closest hook on his belt.

“Are you _mad?”_ He waves his blaster for emphasis. “Yes!”

“Then hold onto me, and don’t kriffing let go!”

Jesse snaps the remaining free line into the most secure-looking loop on the maintenance panel casings. He rips off his helmet and turns it in one motion, shoving it swiftly over Kix’s head while his hands are preoccupied finding holds on Jesse’s armour.

“Jesse!” he protests, but the clattering footsteps and droning rolling is getting closer—

_“Don’t let go!”_

Jesse grabs hold of the wall and punches the keys to close the blast doors at both ends of their sector. The nearest front is almost around the corner and already blasting when his authorisation code flashes green.

Half a heartbeat before Jesse’s facing down the barrel of a blaster, inner and outer airlock doors piston open with immediate, deafening howling. Jesse’s wrenched right off his feet and his arm has to twist to resist dislocating itself, and they’re both hauled mercilessly towards open space like flags in a storm. Kix is yelling, maybe, though Jesse can’t hear over the roar of changing pressure and the slamming of metal against metal. He can’t breathe, can’t even open his eyes against the battering he’s getting but he hopes—

One of Kix’s arms slips from around his back. Despite the line secure between their belts, it feels like Jesse’s heart stops dead in his chest. 

Fumbling near-blindly for the panel, he prays fiercely that the cessation of colliding metal means that all the droids are gone. He scrapes the edge of the screen, and the airlock doors slam closed with a clang. Jesse collapses awkwardly on his knees when they hit the ground, but he couldn’t care less—not when the weight of Kix nearly bowls him onto his back, irrefutably, thanks all to the Manda, _there._

Cautiously he cracks open his eyes as he pants for breath; the corridor is blessedly droid-free, still standing, and Kix is sprawled across his chest and clinging. Jesse’s face hurts, and one side of his waist is being pulled awkwardly by the line attached to the maintenance panel above, but he’s alive. Miraculously. Oxygen levels flash low on the screen but are rising back to normal, and no other blips appear on the level.

Gingerly, Kix sits up and releases the grip of his shock-stiffened limbs. His boots skid across durasteel when he reaches up, seated on Jesse’s thighs. Jesse’s helmet falls from his fingers with a clatter.

“Well,” Jesse says, still a bit punched-out. Kix stares at him, unspeaking, with a nearly blank expression and barely parted lips. He shrugs. “It worked.”

For a moment, there’s silence. And then Kix kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The spacewalk thing (as far as I know) is true! Two points of contact with the station at all times. Fun, huh.
> 
> Clone Haven ship of the month for February 2021 is Jessix! Week 1: Trust


	3. Chapter 3

_“YOU!”_

The mid-morning hubbub of the infirmary dies to a hushed murmur in the face of a legendary senior medic’s bellow. Survivors of the last encounter take up nearly every bed in the wing, and all of them are watching intently as Jesse freezes like a tooka in the headlights in the entrance.

Kix storms up to him with rage in his eyes and shaking tension in his pointing, accusatory finger.

“You!” He hauls Jesse inside and shoves him backwards with every punctuated word. “You—absolute— _moron!_ And you’re showing up _now?”_

“Er, okay,” Jesse says dumbly. It probably isn’t the best time to blurt out how hot Kix is right now, but with nothing else coming to mind he keeps his mouth firmly shut.

“Okay?” Kix shouts. _“OKAY?_ I am _furious_ with you, Jesse!”

He’s shoved through an open door—a private room, soundproof and relatively small—and stumbles when his heel hits the leg of a desk.

“Don’t you _dare_ do anything so unbelievably stupid ever again.”

There’s barely a moment to breathe before Kix is in his space, his lips on Jesse’s, nipping and devouring him and forcing him back over the desktop. Jesse scrabbles for purchase at his shoulders and tries not to fall as his armour clicks and slips against the surface—it doesn’t seem to matter so much when he has Kix’s tongue in his mouth and making him moan, though.

“Get this off,” he breathes against Jesse’s mouth, and Jesse is already dropping plates to the floor. “Let me feel you.”

“What’s gotten into you, Kixie?” he asks quietly. “I thought you were all right?”

“Of course I’m all right,” Kix snarls, “but you could have _died!_ Died and left me to deal with it—”

Again, Jesse doesn’t think it’s quite the time to remind him that if he died, Kix probably would have too. He finishes shucking his top armour and tries not to care that it’s scattered around the floor.

Kix’s hands are on him immediately. Jesse has to lean on the desk to part his thighs for him to stand between them, to press them together flush and feel the taste of heat that leaks through their suits. For him to bury his nose in Jesse’s shoulder, dig one hand into his waist as the other caresses the side of his neck with inexorable care. 

He’s still for only a moment; his hands tear Jesse’s cuisses from his thighs and then his arms are around his back. He holds Jesse so tightly, squeezes him to his own body. It leaves Jesse at a loss for what to do.

“I’m here,” he says eventually. His own arms slide over Kix’s trembling shoulders. “We’re all right.”

“You almost weren’t,” is muttered, half hidden in Jesse’s chest.

“But I am. You were in just as much danger, you know.”

“I don’t care.”

Jesse sighs. “Well I do. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it to you.”

Kix shakes his head in Jesse’s hold. Whether in agreement or not, he couldn’t say. For a long moment the room is quiet, unmoving.

“Why did you give me your helmet?”

Jesse smoothes one hand over Kix’s back and the other over the short buzz of his hair. “Because you had nothing else.”

“It wouldn’t have saved me. Not if we got pulled out into space.”

“No, but it might have given you a chance.”

“We’d both have died! It might have saved you if you’d kept it.”

“I don’t want that.” Kix tenses. He pulls his head up from where he’s buried it to gape angrily up at him again. Jesse sighs and, briefly, lets his tired eyes close. “You said it yourself. You would have died and I would have had to deal with it. I don’t want to do that.”

“But—”

“Ever, Kix.” Jesse tightens his hold again, pulls Kix back in to rest his forehead against Jesse’s chest. “Right now I’m your best friend, not your casual fuck.” 

He stiffens under Jesse’s arms.

“You’re important to me. The most important. Much more than I am. I don’t ever want to have to watch you die and walk it off after, and I don’t know that I could do it if I did.”

“…Me neither.” Kix’s voice is high pitched and whining like he’s holding back tears. Jesse pretends he doesn’t notice and goes back to stroking his hair. 

“Then you understand. That helmet was more than you had, and that was all that mattered to me. So next time something like that happens, make sure you’re dressed before you go running off to fight, please?”

Kix snorts and sags suddenly against him as if his strings have snapped, laughing and laughing on the verge of exhaustedly-hysterical.

“I thought you liked me without my clothes.”

Jesse opens his mouth only for a startled laugh to force its way past his words. “Yes,” he manages, “presuming we’re not being shot at.”

And Jesse—he knows why Kix is upset. It’s more than the _we-almost-died_ that they face for weeks on end every campaign and mission. It’s that Jesse sprung it on him, such a reckless and stupid plan, and that it was the vision of every trooper’s worst nightmare come to life. It’s that Kix thought for a moment that Jesse would be marching on without him. It’s that staring into the spacial abyss with nothing between you and it but the wire tethering you… It’s a harrowing experience.

Still, with everything that Kix has done since, it can’t help but make him feel a little glimmer of hope.

“Don’t think I’m not still angry with you.” Kix’s voice sounds stronger, even though he’s burrowing into Jesse’s front again. It’s a relief, and, honestly, Jesse is more than happy to have him cuddling so close, especially with how comfortable it is.

“I’m not brave enough to think I’ve escaped, don’t worry.”

“Good.”

“Aren’t you still on the clock?”

“They’re fine without me.”

Sometimes, Jesse can’t help but think his life is almost like that of a holofilm. It’s at that moment that someone decides to bang on the door, startling Kix regrettably out of Jesse’s arms. He starts picking up the pieces of his armour while Kix goes to open the door.

“What?” he sighs. 

“You done in here?” It’s Coric, who perfected the ‘disgruntled and unimpressed’ look long ago and doesn’t hesitate to use it now. “Your results are in if you want to look at them sometime this cycle.”

Kix seems to deflate where he stands, rubbing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “I’ll be there in a second. Thanks.”

He goes to turn around, but Jesse waves him off with his left bracer. “Go on, duty calls. I’ll still be around to shout at later.”

“You better be,” Kix huffs, but his expression is soft. He disappears around the corner, leaving Coric in his wake watching Jesse with amusement.

“I should probably say congratulations,” he says.

Jesse snorts. “On what? Delaying my inevitable death?”

“I was talking about Kix, but that too.”

He frowns up at him as he resettles his cuirass. “On Kix?”

“Yeah? Haven’t you two been like, dancing around each other since forever?”

“…Huh?”

Coric huffs, slouching against the door frame and crossing his arms. “Congratulations on _getting together,_ you meathead.”

Jesse reels. 

“We’re not, though? At least, I really don’t think so? He—I—we—” He flails a little, waving one spaulder in flustered confusion. “We haven’t talked about it?”

The look on Coric’s face makes him feel like he’s missed something important; he doubts anyone’s going to tell him. 

“Apologies,” Coric tells him. “My mistake.”

Jesse shakes his head and slips off the desk. Coric smirks.

“But you know, he hasn’t accepted any other offers since you two started going at it.”

“And how would you know?”

He shrugs, steps out of the room. “That kind of word gets around.”

… 

Well what the hell is he supposed to do with that?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 part ii!  
> Apologies for the wait.

Jesse finds himself thinking about Coric’s little observation for the rest of his day. He nearly drops several datapads on his feet walking into the corners of control panels and the edges of doorways. He scares a couple of shinies by appearing out of nowhere and snapping at them. He’s so distracted, that when he finally gets off shift and goes immediately for a shower in the hopes of clearing his head, he almost walks face-first into Kix himself as he’s leaving the sonic block.

“Whoah, watch it,” Kix mutters. All Jesse can do is nod—he might have blurted something then and there, if the stars hadn’t taken pity on him and stolen away his tongue. 

Kix rolls his eyes and flicks his arm with the back of his hand. “Still angry with you.”

And then he’s gone, and Jesse wonders if someone really  _ is _ out to get him today. “You’re always angry with me,” he says to empty air, and shakes his head.

Nobody takes any notice of him while he showers. He’s grateful for that at least; they’re much less likely to notice him spacing out if they’re not looking. But then he’s done and wandering his way down to the lockers for his blacks and—

“I thought you were done ages ago!”

Kix gives him a look. “I was. I decided to wait. It’s not my fault you take forever.” He leans against Jesse’s locker, half dressed without his shirt, and watches him. “Well I take it you cleaned up.”

“Er, yeah,” Jesse says. He isn’t entirely sure where Kix is going with any of this until there are fingers splayed over his chest and pushing him back into the corner of the changing rooms. His back hits cold durasteel and his front is covered with the heat of his best friend, and Kix might as well have murder in his eyes with the intensity of his stare.

“Should I be worried for my shift tomorrow?” he tries to joke. He still can’t seem to keep his hands to himself, ending up on Kix’s shoulders as Kix tilts his head to the side and leans in.

“Maybe you should be,” he says. “Jump.”

Jesse jumps. Kix fills the space in an instant. He crashes into Jesse, his hands finding the undersides of his thighs and digging in with nails until he can haul Jesse up higher. Heat flushes beneath Jesse’s cheeks under that unwavering gaze, his legs curling around Kix’s waist and crushing them closer, trapping his half-hard cock between Kix’s abs and his own. He barely hears the whistles and jeers in the background.

“Mm,  _ fuck,” _ Jesse breathes. His head thunks back against the wall and Kix hums agreeably into his skin. There’s a flash of teeth just before they sink into the valley beneath Jesse’s ribs and make him gasp with the hot sharpness of it, squeezing Kix closer between his thighs. Nails scrape over damp skin as Kix works bite after bruise after bite into Jesse; this is going to be a fun one, clearly.

By the time Kix makes it to his lips the both of them are breathing a little heavier than they were before. Kix’s eyes are dark and his mouth hangs slightly open, his bottom lip caught between his teeth as he trails his gaze over Jesse’s face. His hands have hooked under Jesse’s knees and pulled them higher, leaving him to slip  _ just enough _ to feel Kix’s cock hardening against his arse. 

Jesse’s groan is swallowed in a biting kiss. Kix rolls their hips together while Jesse can do little but arch into him and cling—he grips the back of Kix’s neck automatically, rewarded with a shudder and a growl for his trouble.

“I don’t—suppose—you actually have—any slick on you,” he pants between tugs on his lip. “Do you?”

Kix gives him a flat and unimpressed look which—kriffing Force—has the exact opposite effect that’s most likely intended. He shifts Jesse’s weight easily onto his hip to pull a slim tube from his waistband, and if Jesse hadn’t been horny as all fuck before… 

Kix raises a brow. “Do you want me to fuck you, or should I just leave you here?”

_ “Please.” _

It’s past Jesse’s lips before he can make it more than a whimper. He’s so kriffing hard from a few angry looks and a lift it’s ridiculous—

“Please, Kix—”

“Please  _ what.” _

“Please fuck me.”

Kix smirks. “All right. Since you asked so nicely.”

Cold, wet fingers are probing at his entrance between one heartbeat and the next. Jesse sighs and forces himself to relax, tilting his hips in order to give Kix better access and keep their balance. The first slides in long and slow, thick and just right as it is but not  _ enough, _ and dear karking Force the interest and concentration on Kix’s face—

Jesse groans when he eventually adds another finger and twists them both inside him.

“You’re tight,” Kix mutters. “Stop squirming.”

“This would probably be easier on a bed,” Jesse suggests. Kix glares up at him and doesn’t miss the way his cock jumps.

“Uh huh. You’re telling me.”

So Jesse shuts up and whimpers until Kix adds a third finger, then whines and moans and toes the line of being a bratty bastard for a whole minute before Kix loses all patience.

“If you hurt in the morning, it’s on you.”

“Oh,” Jesse sighs. “Finally! I thought you’d never—oh!  _ Oh…” _

Kix leans forward and lets Jesse sink down, inch by slow inch, onto his cock. Jesse isn’t even surprised when his legs are peeled away from Kix’s waist for him to pin him by the undersides of his knees, only that bit more turned on.

“You’re going to be the karking death of me,” Kix grunts, as if he’s not currently  _ torturing _ Jesse. He pulls back and thrusts farther in, dragging another low sound from Jesse’s throat. “Bloody karking menace.”

“You—haha—you still love me though.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jess.”

“Maybe… Oh,  _ shit.” _

Jesse arches away from the wall into each hot, hard thrust of Kix inside him. Kix sinks his teeth into him again, marking up his chest as he fucks him into the wall, muffling his groans in Jesse’s skin.

“You feel so fucking good,” he mutters. “Just… perfect.”

Jesse can’t laugh for the lack of breath in his lungs. Every slide of Kix’s slick cock fills him and pulls on his insides in tantalising drags, feeding the heat that builds at the base of his own hard cock, standing neglected. When Kix’s hand slips and Jesse’s leg falls into the crook of his elbow, he only hefts it higher and wraps his hand around Jesse’s neck instead.

“Oooh, shit, okay—mmh, Kix!”

“Beginning to wonder if you know what the word  _ quiet _ even means.”

“Never said I had to be…”

The rest of whatever Jesse was going to say is lost to the press of Kix’s lips to his, to Kix’s tongue in his mouth tripping each syllable and making him groan instead. It’s probably just as well that the words are long forgotten by the time Kix lets up; the fingers that tighten around Jesse’s throat fling all sense of coherent thought straight from his head.

Below him, Kix smirks. “Oh, have I found the mute button now?”

He snaps his hips up even harder. The fingers flex over his windpipe, and Jesse whines.

“For a second—thought I was g’nna bend you over the desk in the recovery room,” he grunts. “’D’you like that, one day? ’F I did?”

“Fuck.” Jesse moans, hips stuttering. “Fuck yeah, Kixie—”

“Force you’re so fucking  _ needy.” _

Jesse keens for every pump of Kix’s cock inside him. His feet dangle and twitch in the air and he should feel exposed, or embarrassed, but mostly he feels himself flush hot, seeing how little effort it’s taking for Kix to keep him up.  _ Some day I’ll need to drag your sorry arse several hundred metres at a time to get off the field, _ Kix keeps telling him; Jesse’s only worried that when the time comes he’ll be coherent enough to be mortified when he springs an instant boner. If he thinks about being held up against this wall he certainly will… Especially now that he’s nearly out of his mind with how badly he needs to come.

Kix swears and fucks him harder, gradually losing control of his hips as he begins to come. The hand on Jesse’s throat tightens and he almost chokes on his own spit, so much at once that he can barely catch a breath between his cries.

Kix’s gasps are hot and wet over his chest. He slams up into Jesse a final few times before his entire body is strung taut against his, fingers twitching on his neck, a hard line of skin on hot skin and a brush against Jesse’s cock that has him writhing in Kix’s hold.

“Mmn,” Kix grumbles breathlessly, relaxing as he comes down. His forehead rests on Jesse’s shoulder, and his arms have begun to tremble. “Kriff, Jess.”

“Kiiiiix,” Jesse whines.

_ “What.” _

“I want to come.”

Kix tilts his head until it’s his chin on Jesse’s shoulder instead. He watches his expression twist and furrow with a pointed, arched brow. “Oh, you think you deserve that, do you?”

_ “Fuck.” _ Jesse’s head thuds back against the durasteel. Kix’s voice, low and breathless, goes straight to his cock.

If he moves his hands from Kix’s neck he’s a little afraid he might slip. Then again, they’re clenched so tight he doesn’t know if he  _ could. _ And… maybe it would be worth it, even if he ended up on his arse on the floor… 

Kix sighs. His lips quirk into a tiny, amused smile nonetheless. “Quit whining, you needy bastard. I’m going to let you down and I need you to not collapse on me.”

That’s what he says, but he still has to crush Jesse against the wall to keep him from toppling. Jesse isn’t complaining in the least, not when it gets Kix back within kissing distance and a sweet fist around his aching cock. 

He bucks up into Kix’s grip despite how shaky he is, shuddering with ripples and rolls of pleasure and whimpering into his mouth. Kix’s lips move softly over his now, so much calmer but no less sweetly pleasurable, no less  _ passionate _ . It doesn’t take much, anyway, before he feels the waves of his orgasm rip through him, striping Kix’s hand and both their bodies with come to add to the mess dripping down his thighs.

“Good—good thing we bunked so close to the freshers,” he pants. Kix laughs breathlessly and helps him stagger toward a bench to recover on.

“Good thing,” he echoes, and slumps down at Jesse’s side. 

They lie like that until their breathing evens, and until Jesse can drag himself away from that tiny, bright white flame of hope.

(“Well, I guess so,” Kix says when he works up the courage to ask about Coric’s little taunt. “I haven’t had the time. And Coric needs to keep his damned long nose out of my business.”

Jesse hums and doesn’t say anything to that—can’t think of anything that he wouldn’t make a fool of himself with.

“So we’re good?” he asks instead. A little timid.

Kix turns to look at him over the pillow, a fond curl to his smile and the crease of his eyes. “We’re good,” he tells him. “We’re always good.”

Jesse smiles.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me here on [tumblr!](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/)


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